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OTTAWA — In a week during which there was plenty of news about at-grade railway crossings — all of it bad — the city indicated it’s sticking with its policy of not requiring OC Transpo buses to stop automatically at all crossings.

It was a bold move.

Since the Sept. 18 crash between an OC Transpo bus and a Via Rail passenger train in which six people were killed, many members of the public have called for public transit buses to be required to stop at all railway crossings, at all times.

Although everyone agrees that all the railway security features were working fine the day of the tragic crash — witnesses reported the lights were flashing and the gates were down, facts confirmed later by the Transportation Safety Board — making buses stop at every crossing is still seen by some as an extra security measure.

City officials understand the sentiment. Even though neither federal regulations nor the provincial Highway Traffic Act require stopping at each crossing, intuitively, it seems as though automatic stopping would be safer for buses.

But intuition isn’t always right. Nor should it be the basis of public policy. Instead, the city quietly hired (and why quietly is anyone’s guess) MMM Group to undertake an independent review of the evidence out there on whether stopping automatically at crossings is actually safer.

Just to be clear, we obviously expect all vehicles to stop when lights are flashing, bells are ringing, and barriers are down. (No OC Transpo routes traverse crossings that are completely unprotected.) What’s currently under discussion is whether buses should stop even when no warning signals are engaged, a situation referred to in the transportation world as “non-active.”

And the answer is a very resounding No.

According to MMM Group’s research of existing data, requiring buses to stop at all crossings actually increases the likelihood of an accident between a train and a passenger bus by 17.4 per cent. Now, that’s a 17 per cent increase of a small number, thank goodness — one of the problems researching this question is that there are so few accident statistics to draw from — but clearly we don’t want to heighten the chances of an accident. Even so, we should give the city credit for setting policy that goes against public opinion, which is no easy task.

Still, there are several serious issues the transit commission needs to consider when it meets Wednesday to discuss MMM Group’s report.

First is the age of the data used in the study, most of which dates back 30 years.

The “seminal” quantitative research looking specifically at this issue was funded and published by the U.S. Federal Highway Administration in 1985.

In an official city briefing with councillors and media last week (which occurred before the report was released, making it difficult to ask detailed questions), MMM Group’s Geoffrey Millen contended that “from a technical standpoint, (the study) is very rigorous. They used a large amount of data, all the data has been validated.” Fair enough.

But technology has changed in the past three decades. The transit bus of 1985 isn’t the bus of today. More recent research would be reassuring, and that research should be funded by Transport Canada, perhaps in conjunction with its U.S. counterpart to reflect the current North American experience.

The province also needs to look at its review its own policies in this area. Why does the Ontario government make school buses stop at each crossing if the only research in this area shows the practice increases the risk of a crash? And why would the province have one rule for school buses but another for transit buses? In an emailed statement, Transportation Minister Glen Murray said, “Staff are in the process of reviewing, in detail, the findings of the recently completed independent report prepared by MMM Group for OC Transpo.”

And then there’s the timing of the city’s report. More than once, Millen referred to the fact that stopping at all railway crossings, even when they weren’t active, wasn’t safer, as long as the warning devices were working properly. But as we know, the warning signals at a number of crossings in Barrhaven are malfunctioning on a regular basis. That’s why residents are taking it upon themselves to stop — or at least slow down significantly — before they drive across the tracks. Who can blame them?

So until the signal issues in Ottawa are fixed and complete confidence in the safety of these intersections in restored, many will remain skeptical that buses should not automatically at stop all railway crossings, no matter what the 30-year-old data shows.

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Chianello: More recent research would reassure public about rail crossing safety

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